My Sister's Grave

“Tracy pressed the keys into Sarah’s hand and curled her fingers over them. ‘Next time, just knock down the damn targets.’ She turned to leave.

‘Your hat,’ Sarah said.

Tracy removed her black Stetson and popped it on Sarah’s head. When she did Sarah stuck out her tongue. Tracy wanted to be angry, but Sarah was impossible to stay mad at. Tracy felt a grin inch across her own face.

‘You’re such a brat.’

Sarah gave her an exaggerated smile. ‘Yes, but that’s why you love me.’

‘Yeah, that’s why I love you all right.’ […] Tracy had pressed the silver belt buckle into Sarah’s palm along with the truck keys. She would not see either again for twenty years.”

This passage marks the last time Tracy sees Sarah alive, establishing dramatic irony since the reader knows Sarah’s fate while Tracy remains unaware. The exchange of objects—keys, hat, and belt buckle—creates physical symbols that later serve as evidence and emotional touchstones. The dialogue reveals their sisterly dynamic through contrasting emotions: Tracy’s irritation versus Sarah’s playfulness. The abrupt narrative shift in the final sentence employs foreshadowing through temporal displacement, juxtaposing this ordinary moment with its future significance.

“It could be so cruel, hope. But for twenty years it was all she’d had to hold on to, the only thing to push back the darkness that lingered on the periphery […] Tracy had clung to it, until that very last moment when Roy Calloway had handed her the belt buckle, and extinguished the final, cruel, flicker.”

This internal monologue articulates Tracy’s central emotional conflict after two decades of uncertainty, while the personification of hope as “cruel” conveys her psychological state, one defined by unresolved grief. Because the belt buckle is both physical evidence and a symbol of the sisters’ connection, the imagery of extinguishing a “flicker” of light upon its return signals the end of hope for Sarah’s survival and the beginning of Tracy’s focused quest for justice.

“‘I am not…’

‘I am not…,’ Sarah repeated.

‘I am not afraid…’

‘I am not afraid…’

‘I am not afraid of the dark,’ they said in unison, and Tracy clicked off the light.”

This childhood ritual serves as a central motif throughout the novel, representing both the sisters’ bond and their approach to fear. The repetitive structure mimics a call-and-response prayer, while the dialogue’s fragmentation creates a rhythmic pattern that emphasizes each word’s significance, building toward their unified voices.